Variety Pans 'The Road' After Film Festival Debut
Variety Pans 'The Road' After Film Festival Debut
The Big Picture
Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture
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'The Road's' Oscar chances take a big dive
September 3, 2009 | 1:50 pm
Having just read Variety critic Todd McCarthy's brutal takedown of "The Road" today, I'm guessing that Oscar watchers everywhere are checking this movie off their prime best picture contender list. The long-delayed movie, adapted from Cormac McCarthey's 2006 bestseller, was supposed to be the Weinstein Co.'s top Oscar candidate this year (along with "Nine," its Rob Marshall-directed musical). But it's hard to imagine a prestige film, which is poised to make its debut at a string of upcoming fall film festivals, getting a worse review so early in awards season.
McCarthy doesn't beat around the bush. He begins his review by saying: "This 'Road' leads nowhere,'' going on to say that the movie "falls dispiritingly short on every front, showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death." The film is set in a post-apocalyptic rural America, with a father and son wandering the barren landscape, fending off many unfriendly marauders. But according to McCarthy, the film's director, John Hillcoat, "just hopscotches from scene to scene in almost random fashion without any sense of pacing or dramatic modulation." As for Viggo Mortensen, who plays the lead role, McCarthy says he "lacks the gravitas to carry the picture; suddenly resembling Gabby Hayes with his whiskers and wayward hair."
Despite the wonderful treatment McCarthy got from the Coen brothers with "No Country for OId Men," it sounds like lightning is not poised to strike twice.
Image: From "The Road." Credit: Macall Polay / Dimension Films
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I didn't realize Todd McCarthy had that much power.
I read many very favorable reviews of The Road today - The Independent, The Guardian, to name two. Even at least one Hollywood Reporter writer loved it. McCarthy's was the strongest negative review out there. While there were some other less-than-positive reviews, McCarthy was alone in slashing the movie in that way.
Posted by: Laurie Mann | September 03, 2009 at 03:41 PM
So you're trumpeting this bad review to further the demise of the film and then prove your prediction correct? Got it.
Posted by: Jack Henry | September 03, 2009 at 05:21 PM
It is as easy to criticize as it is hard to write. -AB
Posted by: AB | September 03, 2009 at 05:44 PM
First off, the book does not lead somewhere. It is a journey of survival. No one knows where anyplace is. It is a walk of the living dead.
The destitution is revealed in the protaganists persona. A grubby fellow in the throes of staying alive each day is one who does not need vanity How can a critic know the depth of what can possibly be gathered after a stripping of normal life? I would not take this review to my heart but create my own evaluation after I see the film. The book was brilliant and compelling.
Posted by: Bettye | September 03, 2009 at 05:48 PM
Just quickly: is there not a note of hypocrisy in posting the lament "Do we really have to talk about the Oscars already?" on Sep 1 and then posting 'The Road's' Oscar chances take a big dive' on Sep 3? I'd say I sympathize more with the former post.
Posted by: anon | September 03, 2009 at 05:58 PM
Well, if McCarthy liked No Country, then I can logically conclude that "The Road" will probably be a great film to watch. Anyone who liked "No Country" is not a person whose opinion I respect in any way, shape or form.
Posted by: Richard | September 03, 2009 at 06:40 PM
Having seen a rough cut I can say I agree with his assessment. There are some really harrowing scenes, but the majority of the movie falls flat. There's almost no development given to Charlise Theron's character. Instead she exists in short flashbacks. It gives you the sense they could only afford her for a few days of filming. I don't blame Viggo in fact he carries some of the more intense scenes very well. People always seem to hold talented actors responsible for bad screenwriting; I guess it's only fair because on the flip-side they afford them all the accolades when a film is actually good. The root concept is very intriguing, this could have been a very good film.
Posted by: Keith | September 03, 2009 at 06:47 PM
Just a thought about bad reviews: I can recall two movies that were savaged by 'prominent' critics upon their release, a duo that nonetheless had rather successful 'careers' at theaters all over this country and around the world. They would be 'Bonnie and Clyde' and 'The Sound of Music'. I'm sure other readers can add many, many more titles to this abbreviated list. So, rancid reviews are not necessarily the last word in determining the success of a movie.
Posted by: cody mccall | September 03, 2009 at 06:54 PM
Horrible news. Unfortunate that spectacular material like this is put in the hands of buffoons.
Posted by: Nathan | September 03, 2009 at 07:01 PM
Did the reviewer read the book? Because it to skips randomly from scene to scene. Under any circumstances this would be a very difficult book to film. As for the acting, sounds like the reviewer had a preconceived opinion.
Posted by: Lisa Porter | September 03, 2009 at 07:42 PM
what a shame...it is an incredible book-and i think Mortensen can be an amazing actor too--i was looking forward to this being a great movie...once again, too many cooks in the soup=an inedible (and unviewable) MESS
Posted by: amc | September 03, 2009 at 07:47 PM
"Having just read Variety critic Todd McCarthy's brutal takedown of "The Road" today, I'm guessing that Oscar watchers everywhere are checking this movie off their prime best picture contender list."
I have not seen this movie yet, but I'm hoping the Oscar voters are willing to make up their own minds and not discount a movie because of what one critic has said - have you read Denby's flame of Tarrantino in The New Yorker? That was brutal, but I went to see the movie and decide for myself. Denby made some interesting points, but thankfully I enjoyed "Basterds" a lot more than he did. I decided it's better to watch Tarrantino for entertainment rather than for a taste of cinema-as-art, a long time ago.
Posted by: Shaun Pearson | September 03, 2009 at 10:26 PM
This is totally ridiculous. This film has not yet been released, and "Oscar watchers everywhere are checking [it]...off their prime best picture contender list"? LA Times and Patrick Goldstein, you have sunk to a new low. Why don't you invest more time in writing about the filmmaking process, and giving reviews of artistic films more space in your printed paper, rather than writing about box office results and Hollywood award gossip? It's really sad to see such a good paper stoop to this kind of cheesy Perez Hilton-style trash. It's blog postings like this that kill small and challenging films before they ever get a chance to reach an audience. Grow up and go back to journalism school.
Posted by: Patrick | September 03, 2009 at 11:31 PM
I didn't know one guys review could tank an Oscar bid.
Especially that one guy being a critic for a trade publication.
Posted by: ben | September 03, 2009 at 11:31 PM
Are you serious? A blog about what a reviewer said about a movie. PLLease! First of all, Variety is an industry rag. Its film reviews have always been hack jobs, not thoughtful analyes of film as art. So if one relies on what an industry rag says about a film, then that person really does not like movies as anything other than a profit unit. Secondly, if Cormac McCarthy actually said that Vigo Mortenson does not have the gravitas, then he is full of himself. Although he is a great novelist, McCarthy does not create great characters. He creates wonderful, wistful tone poems. Characters are not central to his themes. What the forces of fate and nature do to the characters is important. And setting a mood is, too. Lastly, if you want to comment about a film, see the damn thing; don't get all bitchy and girlie and snarky about what someone else said.
Posted by: Frank Stanton | September 04, 2009 at 01:08 AM
You all know of course what this means to a lot of us unwashed movie public. This is the movie to watch! Vigo Mortensen is a great actor. Sorry Variety!
Posted by: Jack Congson | September 04, 2009 at 02:42 AM
How many hours until Nikki Finke writes the same story and claims it as an exclusive?
Posted by: Mike | September 04, 2009 at 02:46 AM
As a follow-up to this blog, I scanned the net for mentions of "The Road" with regard to reviews or impressions from festivals. I am getting a different impression than the one presented here by Mr. Goldstein and Todd McCarthy. The impression from the net is that this is a good film. The further impression is that Vigo did a very good interpretation of the Father character. There is an excellent, in-depth review of the film with background commentary on the process of bringing the book to the screen in Esquire magazine online. This leaves me with a further distate for disjointed pronunciations from a blogger about what a single reviewer has to say about a film. It would seem that Mr. Goldstein is trying to cast Mr. McCarthy as having more credibility as a reviwer than he really has. I repeat that Variety is an industry rag whose sole purpose is to write about profitability in Hollywood. Its reviews rarely touch upon the artistry of films. It fauns over the likes of Michael Bay and Bruce Willis' Die Hard films. It is uncomfortable commenting on real content in films or the idea of film as an art form.
Posted by: Frank Stanton | September 04, 2009 at 12:54 PM
So you're saying that YOU haven't seen the movie yet? And - have I got this right- based on one incredibly snarky, meanspirited review [and disregarding the mostly positive reviews the film is receiving) by ONE critic that, we should all just fuhgetabout watching "The Road"?
Wow! This Todd McCarthy guy must be one special dude...I probably can't thank him enough for taking the time to form my opinion for me!
Oh wait, he only did that to you, right, Patrick?
Did you even think this through?
Posted by: Just Me | September 04, 2009 at 02:16 PM
Why are you writing this as though Todd McCarthy, the guy who thought Oliver Stone's egregious Natural Born Killers was some kind of dazzling masterpiece, had a shred of cred?
Posted by: eyeswiredopen | September 05, 2009 at 05:38 AM
Sep. 4--"The Road" is off to a rocky start.
The major movie production that filmed in Erie and Crawford counties in 2008 received a scathing review on Thursday from Variety, an established entertainment trade magazine.
The film, which stars Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen and co-stars Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall, was shown Wednesday on the opening night of the Venice Film Festival.
"The Road" will then play at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 10-19, before its theatrical release nationwide on Oct. 16.
"This 'Road' leads to nowhere," wrote Todd McCarthy of Variety. "This long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death, ("The Road") may receive a measure of respect in some quarters, but it is very, very far from the film it should have been."
The movie, a father-son survival tale set in a post-apocalyptic America, was shot in parts of Oregon, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.
In April 2008, a film crew spent two weeks shooting at various locations at Presque Isle State Park. Mortensen was on Beach 10 and Sunset Point during his days, and spent several evenings eating dinner at Bertrand's Bistro on North Park Row.
The crew then went to Conneaut Lake Park and filmed at the shuttered resort. After a fire in February 2008 destroyed the park's Dreamland Ballroom complex, the location became a perfect setting for the bleak story.
"The Road," adapted from Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was originally scheduled for a theatrical release in November 2008, but was delayed twice.
Todd McCarthy wrote that director John Hillcoat "has come up with some arresting scorched-earth vistas," captured on location, but added that the filmmaker "missed the bigger picture entirely."
"The drama is one little genre step away from being an outright zombie movie," Todd McCarthy wrote.
In May, Esquire magazine labeled "The Road" as "the most important movie of the year," noting the burden it carried by adapting such a beloved and honored book.
"No Country for Old Men," an earlier Cormac McCarthy novel, was adapted into a movie by brothers Ethan and Joel Coen in 2007. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four Oscars, including best picture, director and adapted screenplay.
"If you're going to adapt a book like Cormac McCarthy's best-seller, you're pretty much obliged to make a terrific film or it's not worth doing," Todd McCarthy wrote. "First, because expectations are so high, and second, because the picture needs to make it worth people's while to sit through something so grim."
Other reviews for "The Road" after its screening in Venice weren't as dismal as Variety's take but were still lukewarm.
Geoffrey MacNab of the Independent, in Great Britain, wrote that Hillcoat "had made a film of power and sensitivity that works remarkably well on screen." He then added, "It is short on dialogue and very bleak in subject matter, but nonetheless makes absorbing and affecting viewing."
Lee Marshall, of the London Evening Standard, wrote "Cormac McCarthy's novel worked because of what it left to the imagination. The film leaves nothing to the imagination."
Marshall then called the script "remarkably faithful to the original," but added that it "doesn't feel quite right.
The film is bleak and visionary, but leaves a faintly nasty taste in the mouth, as if it wanted to rope in the horror fans under its arthouse cloak."
Marshall concluded his review admitting that "there's no denying its raw power."
"At the end of the Venice press screening, there was a stunned silence," he wrote. "We had been well and truly pummeled -- and then given an ending that seemed just a little trite, as if it had been imposed by accountants worried about the feel-good factor of a film that is about life being bad and then getting worse."
The Big Picture
Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture
« Previous Post | The Big Picture Home | Next Post »
'The Road's' Oscar chances take a big dive
September 3, 2009 | 1:50 pm
Having just read Variety critic Todd McCarthy's brutal takedown of "The Road" today, I'm guessing that Oscar watchers everywhere are checking this movie off their prime best picture contender list. The long-delayed movie, adapted from Cormac McCarthey's 2006 bestseller, was supposed to be the Weinstein Co.'s top Oscar candidate this year (along with "Nine," its Rob Marshall-directed musical). But it's hard to imagine a prestige film, which is poised to make its debut at a string of upcoming fall film festivals, getting a worse review so early in awards season.
McCarthy doesn't beat around the bush. He begins his review by saying: "This 'Road' leads nowhere,'' going on to say that the movie "falls dispiritingly short on every front, showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death." The film is set in a post-apocalyptic rural America, with a father and son wandering the barren landscape, fending off many unfriendly marauders. But according to McCarthy, the film's director, John Hillcoat, "just hopscotches from scene to scene in almost random fashion without any sense of pacing or dramatic modulation." As for Viggo Mortensen, who plays the lead role, McCarthy says he "lacks the gravitas to carry the picture; suddenly resembling Gabby Hayes with his whiskers and wayward hair."
Despite the wonderful treatment McCarthy got from the Coen brothers with "No Country for OId Men," it sounds like lightning is not poised to strike twice.
Image: From "The Road." Credit: Macall Polay / Dimension Films
More in: Film Permalink
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I didn't realize Todd McCarthy had that much power.
I read many very favorable reviews of The Road today - The Independent, The Guardian, to name two. Even at least one Hollywood Reporter writer loved it. McCarthy's was the strongest negative review out there. While there were some other less-than-positive reviews, McCarthy was alone in slashing the movie in that way.
Posted by: Laurie Mann | September 03, 2009 at 03:41 PM
So you're trumpeting this bad review to further the demise of the film and then prove your prediction correct? Got it.
Posted by: Jack Henry | September 03, 2009 at 05:21 PM
It is as easy to criticize as it is hard to write. -AB
Posted by: AB | September 03, 2009 at 05:44 PM
First off, the book does not lead somewhere. It is a journey of survival. No one knows where anyplace is. It is a walk of the living dead.
The destitution is revealed in the protaganists persona. A grubby fellow in the throes of staying alive each day is one who does not need vanity How can a critic know the depth of what can possibly be gathered after a stripping of normal life? I would not take this review to my heart but create my own evaluation after I see the film. The book was brilliant and compelling.
Posted by: Bettye | September 03, 2009 at 05:48 PM
Just quickly: is there not a note of hypocrisy in posting the lament "Do we really have to talk about the Oscars already?" on Sep 1 and then posting 'The Road's' Oscar chances take a big dive' on Sep 3? I'd say I sympathize more with the former post.
Posted by: anon | September 03, 2009 at 05:58 PM
Well, if McCarthy liked No Country, then I can logically conclude that "The Road" will probably be a great film to watch. Anyone who liked "No Country" is not a person whose opinion I respect in any way, shape or form.
Posted by: Richard | September 03, 2009 at 06:40 PM
Having seen a rough cut I can say I agree with his assessment. There are some really harrowing scenes, but the majority of the movie falls flat. There's almost no development given to Charlise Theron's character. Instead she exists in short flashbacks. It gives you the sense they could only afford her for a few days of filming. I don't blame Viggo in fact he carries some of the more intense scenes very well. People always seem to hold talented actors responsible for bad screenwriting; I guess it's only fair because on the flip-side they afford them all the accolades when a film is actually good. The root concept is very intriguing, this could have been a very good film.
Posted by: Keith | September 03, 2009 at 06:47 PM
Just a thought about bad reviews: I can recall two movies that were savaged by 'prominent' critics upon their release, a duo that nonetheless had rather successful 'careers' at theaters all over this country and around the world. They would be 'Bonnie and Clyde' and 'The Sound of Music'. I'm sure other readers can add many, many more titles to this abbreviated list. So, rancid reviews are not necessarily the last word in determining the success of a movie.
Posted by: cody mccall | September 03, 2009 at 06:54 PM
Horrible news. Unfortunate that spectacular material like this is put in the hands of buffoons.
Posted by: Nathan | September 03, 2009 at 07:01 PM
Did the reviewer read the book? Because it to skips randomly from scene to scene. Under any circumstances this would be a very difficult book to film. As for the acting, sounds like the reviewer had a preconceived opinion.
Posted by: Lisa Porter | September 03, 2009 at 07:42 PM
what a shame...it is an incredible book-and i think Mortensen can be an amazing actor too--i was looking forward to this being a great movie...once again, too many cooks in the soup=an inedible (and unviewable) MESS
Posted by: amc | September 03, 2009 at 07:47 PM
"Having just read Variety critic Todd McCarthy's brutal takedown of "The Road" today, I'm guessing that Oscar watchers everywhere are checking this movie off their prime best picture contender list."
I have not seen this movie yet, but I'm hoping the Oscar voters are willing to make up their own minds and not discount a movie because of what one critic has said - have you read Denby's flame of Tarrantino in The New Yorker? That was brutal, but I went to see the movie and decide for myself. Denby made some interesting points, but thankfully I enjoyed "Basterds" a lot more than he did. I decided it's better to watch Tarrantino for entertainment rather than for a taste of cinema-as-art, a long time ago.
Posted by: Shaun Pearson | September 03, 2009 at 10:26 PM
This is totally ridiculous. This film has not yet been released, and "Oscar watchers everywhere are checking [it]...off their prime best picture contender list"? LA Times and Patrick Goldstein, you have sunk to a new low. Why don't you invest more time in writing about the filmmaking process, and giving reviews of artistic films more space in your printed paper, rather than writing about box office results and Hollywood award gossip? It's really sad to see such a good paper stoop to this kind of cheesy Perez Hilton-style trash. It's blog postings like this that kill small and challenging films before they ever get a chance to reach an audience. Grow up and go back to journalism school.
Posted by: Patrick | September 03, 2009 at 11:31 PM
I didn't know one guys review could tank an Oscar bid.
Especially that one guy being a critic for a trade publication.
Posted by: ben | September 03, 2009 at 11:31 PM
Are you serious? A blog about what a reviewer said about a movie. PLLease! First of all, Variety is an industry rag. Its film reviews have always been hack jobs, not thoughtful analyes of film as art. So if one relies on what an industry rag says about a film, then that person really does not like movies as anything other than a profit unit. Secondly, if Cormac McCarthy actually said that Vigo Mortenson does not have the gravitas, then he is full of himself. Although he is a great novelist, McCarthy does not create great characters. He creates wonderful, wistful tone poems. Characters are not central to his themes. What the forces of fate and nature do to the characters is important. And setting a mood is, too. Lastly, if you want to comment about a film, see the damn thing; don't get all bitchy and girlie and snarky about what someone else said.
Posted by: Frank Stanton | September 04, 2009 at 01:08 AM
You all know of course what this means to a lot of us unwashed movie public. This is the movie to watch! Vigo Mortensen is a great actor. Sorry Variety!
Posted by: Jack Congson | September 04, 2009 at 02:42 AM
How many hours until Nikki Finke writes the same story and claims it as an exclusive?
Posted by: Mike | September 04, 2009 at 02:46 AM
As a follow-up to this blog, I scanned the net for mentions of "The Road" with regard to reviews or impressions from festivals. I am getting a different impression than the one presented here by Mr. Goldstein and Todd McCarthy. The impression from the net is that this is a good film. The further impression is that Vigo did a very good interpretation of the Father character. There is an excellent, in-depth review of the film with background commentary on the process of bringing the book to the screen in Esquire magazine online. This leaves me with a further distate for disjointed pronunciations from a blogger about what a single reviewer has to say about a film. It would seem that Mr. Goldstein is trying to cast Mr. McCarthy as having more credibility as a reviwer than he really has. I repeat that Variety is an industry rag whose sole purpose is to write about profitability in Hollywood. Its reviews rarely touch upon the artistry of films. It fauns over the likes of Michael Bay and Bruce Willis' Die Hard films. It is uncomfortable commenting on real content in films or the idea of film as an art form.
Posted by: Frank Stanton | September 04, 2009 at 12:54 PM
So you're saying that YOU haven't seen the movie yet? And - have I got this right- based on one incredibly snarky, meanspirited review [and disregarding the mostly positive reviews the film is receiving) by ONE critic that, we should all just fuhgetabout watching "The Road"?
Wow! This Todd McCarthy guy must be one special dude...I probably can't thank him enough for taking the time to form my opinion for me!
Oh wait, he only did that to you, right, Patrick?
Did you even think this through?
Posted by: Just Me | September 04, 2009 at 02:16 PM
Why are you writing this as though Todd McCarthy, the guy who thought Oliver Stone's egregious Natural Born Killers was some kind of dazzling masterpiece, had a shred of cred?
Posted by: eyeswiredopen | September 05, 2009 at 05:38 AM
Sep. 4--"The Road" is off to a rocky start.
The major movie production that filmed in Erie and Crawford counties in 2008 received a scathing review on Thursday from Variety, an established entertainment trade magazine.
The film, which stars Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen and co-stars Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall, was shown Wednesday on the opening night of the Venice Film Festival.
"The Road" will then play at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 10-19, before its theatrical release nationwide on Oct. 16.
"This 'Road' leads to nowhere," wrote Todd McCarthy of Variety. "This long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death, ("The Road") may receive a measure of respect in some quarters, but it is very, very far from the film it should have been."
The movie, a father-son survival tale set in a post-apocalyptic America, was shot in parts of Oregon, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.
In April 2008, a film crew spent two weeks shooting at various locations at Presque Isle State Park. Mortensen was on Beach 10 and Sunset Point during his days, and spent several evenings eating dinner at Bertrand's Bistro on North Park Row.
The crew then went to Conneaut Lake Park and filmed at the shuttered resort. After a fire in February 2008 destroyed the park's Dreamland Ballroom complex, the location became a perfect setting for the bleak story.
"The Road," adapted from Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was originally scheduled for a theatrical release in November 2008, but was delayed twice.
Todd McCarthy wrote that director John Hillcoat "has come up with some arresting scorched-earth vistas," captured on location, but added that the filmmaker "missed the bigger picture entirely."
"The drama is one little genre step away from being an outright zombie movie," Todd McCarthy wrote.
In May, Esquire magazine labeled "The Road" as "the most important movie of the year," noting the burden it carried by adapting such a beloved and honored book.
"No Country for Old Men," an earlier Cormac McCarthy novel, was adapted into a movie by brothers Ethan and Joel Coen in 2007. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four Oscars, including best picture, director and adapted screenplay.
"If you're going to adapt a book like Cormac McCarthy's best-seller, you're pretty much obliged to make a terrific film or it's not worth doing," Todd McCarthy wrote. "First, because expectations are so high, and second, because the picture needs to make it worth people's while to sit through something so grim."
Other reviews for "The Road" after its screening in Venice weren't as dismal as Variety's take but were still lukewarm.
Geoffrey MacNab of the Independent, in Great Britain, wrote that Hillcoat "had made a film of power and sensitivity that works remarkably well on screen." He then added, "It is short on dialogue and very bleak in subject matter, but nonetheless makes absorbing and affecting viewing."
Lee Marshall, of the London Evening Standard, wrote "Cormac McCarthy's novel worked because of what it left to the imagination. The film leaves nothing to the imagination."
Marshall then called the script "remarkably faithful to the original," but added that it "doesn't feel quite right.
The film is bleak and visionary, but leaves a faintly nasty taste in the mouth, as if it wanted to rope in the horror fans under its arthouse cloak."
Marshall concluded his review admitting that "there's no denying its raw power."
"At the end of the Venice press screening, there was a stunned silence," he wrote. "We had been well and truly pummeled -- and then given an ending that seemed just a little trite, as if it had been imposed by accountants worried about the feel-good factor of a film that is about life being bad and then getting worse."
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